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Why We Aren’t Taking a Family Vacation #PGeveryday #Sponsored

Posted by html404 on June 27, 2014
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Home, Things to Do in Chicago, Travel, Uncategorized

My husband and I love to travel, so do our children. We have traveled to Texas, Canada, Florida, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Minnesota and Iowa on family vacations or weekend trips. We always have fun, make memories and of course face challenges.

Copyright: hamik / 123RF Stock Photo. Used with permission

It has been a number of years since we took a family vacation. Probably 2009, if I remember correctly. Money has been tight, plus we have chosen to become farmers. Summer is our busiest time on the farm with our CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture), markets, egg and chicken business. That is one of the downsides to farming. One of the agreements Robert and I had when we decided to farm was that we’d still take vacations. Well…we didn’t realize how long it would take to recover from a bout of unemployment nor did we expect another season of unemployment so soon.

Like the author of this article on P&Geveryday™ titled, Why We’re Skipping Summer Vacation, I admit it is kind of hard sometimes when we hear of others taking their family vacation. I also confess to being green with envy sometimes. But like Christie Tate and her husband, we realize this is the season of life we are in. Extended family vacations are not in the cards for us due to our commitments at home.

That does not mean we cannot take day trips to Chicago to visit museums, the zoo, Navy Pier or the Shedd Aquarium or travel other short distances. It just means it will take a bit of planning on our part to make sure everything at home is taken care of first.

P&Geveryday™ has a section on Travel Tips that will be useful to parents planning trips with children. P&Geveryday™is committed to making every day just a little easier by helping you achieve a life full of rewarding moments. Every day. The site aims to inspire, support and empower you to unlock the extraordinary potential in your everyday life. It offers a variety of topics, helpful articles for family life, delicious recipes for the 4th of July, etc. Check out their informative P&Geveryday Facebook page too.

Do you plan on taking a family vacation this summer? If so, where? If not, why not?

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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Returning a Gift – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on June 25, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Gift Ideas, Girl Stuff, Kids Stuff, Parenting, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Have you ever tried to surprise someone? It takes a lot of work and secrecy, even then plans can be thwarted. We successfully surprised our 14 year old daughter three weeks ago with the gift of a Palomino horse (she’s a quarter horse), on the condition that we’d keep her if she passed the vet’s pre-purchase exam. Sandy is an 18 year old Quarter horse, give or take according to the vet’s look at her teeth.

Over a week ago the vet did a pre-purchase exam and could not pass Sandy based on some lameness issues. The issues are fixable but would cost money and could cost us a good horse if she went completely lame. We were hoping for an easy keeper since Blaze his a hard keeper.

lameness
lame
1 [leym] Show IPA
adjective, lam·er, lam·est.
1.
crippled or physically disabled, especially in the foot or leg so as to limp or walk with difficulty.
2.
impaired or disabled through defect or injury: a lame arm.
3.
weak; inadequate; unsatisfactory; clumsy: a lame excuse.
4.
Slang. out of touch with modern fads or trends; unsophisticated.
verb (used with object), lamed, lam·ing.
5.
to make lame or defective.

We had hoped to keep Sandy for a good long time and let her get her weight up on our yummy pasture. Her stables do not have access to pasture. The horses live in their stalls.

So we say good-bye to Sandy tomorrow evening when her owner comes to pick her up. We had her here on a trial basis. Kind of sad to see her go. Our daughter is handling it like a champ and we are proud of her.

It is hard as a parent to successfully surprise your child with a gift she’s wanted since she was nine and then to have to turn around and return the gift.

Have you ever had to return a much wanted gift?

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Crest – Smiley 360

Posted by Brande on June 24, 2014
in Children's Health, Family Stuff, Health, Health and Fitness, Health and Nutrition, Men's Health, Parenting, Personal Care Products, Uncategorized, Women's Health

“I received this product for free from Smiley360 in exchange for my honest review. You can join Smiley360 here!”

Smile! Crest has some fabulous products out there. I was lucky to be able to test out Crest Pro-Health Tartar Protection with Fluoride Rise and Crest Pro-Health Clinical Plaque Control Toothpaste.

I’m usually on the hunt for the best deal with coupons and sometimes buying substandard toothpastes and rinses. After trying these Crest products my attitude has changed, I will no longer be buying cheaper toothpaste. I really enjoyed the flavor of each of these and how my teeth and mouth felt so much cleaner!

Crest Pro-Health Toothpaste says that it provides benefits to control cavities, gingivitis, plaque, sensitivity, tartar, whitening, and freshen your breath. That’s sounds like a lot of great benefits. Crest also reminds us to brush regularly to achieve the full effectiveness.

Crest Pro-Health Rinse claims many of the similar outcomes of the toothpaste with regular usage. The bottle also states that protects surface stains and rebuilds enamel. That sounds great for a coffee drink like myself.

I’ve been using both products regularly for about a week and my teeth and mouth have felt much better and fresher! I will continue to be using Crest products!

Make sure to head over to Crest’s Facebook Page for upcoming offers and promotions. To learn more about Crest Products click here to be taken to their website! #TartarRinse

Happy Brushing!

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Beautiful Sunrise – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on June 18, 2014
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Photography, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

This was the beautiful sunrise this past Saturday on my way home from doing the paper routes. It was gorgeous and the photo does not do it justice at all.

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Natural Mosquito Repellent – Do You Use it?

Posted by html404 on June 17, 2014
in All Natural Products, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Health & Garden Tuesday, Health and Garden Tuesday, Health and Nutrition, Home, Personal Care Products, Seasonal Stuff

Re-posted from July 2013.

I don’t know what it’s like where you live but here the mosquitoes are horrendous. We don’t like to use chemical laden insect repellents. We tend to rely on a natural mosquito repellent, like our essential oils. I’ve taken to putting the essential oil Purification on at the beginning of my paper route and while it does not work 100%, it does deter many of these pesky creatures. We have also used cedarwood, peppermint and lavender.

Mike the Gardener had a little article on what to plant in your garden to repel mosquitoes and I sure wish we had got our lemongrass and marigolds planted! Our daughter did plant a pot of catnip for the cats, which has sprouted. That was more to keep the cats down at the barn rather than at the house – they think they are house cats and try to get inside! But they have a job to do down at the barn – rodent patrol – so we want them to stay down there. Our children love those cats and started feeding them at the patio door and guess where they camped our and hung around? Yep, the patio door! Or any door for that matter. We nipped that in the butt by telling them to stop feeding the cats at the house or the mice would take over!

So do you have a natural remedy to combat the mosquitoes? Have you ever grown your own natural mosquito repellent?

P.S. If you happen to sign up for Mike the Gardener’s Seed of the month, please use our referral code: https://www.averagepersongardening.com/seedsclub/step_2.php?node=R28D4WDCHM so we can get credit for it.

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Week #25 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on June 14, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Can anyone help me slow down time? I cannot believe another week has sped by! I wasn’t very good about keeping track of our family funnies but I’ll do my best to give you a few for our top laughs, as we join Mel over at The Mommyhood Chronicles for week #25 (for us) in our Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. Miss Moo had quite the adventure this week dragging us with her. She got out of her stall and tramped through the garden, through the pasture and right into old barbed wire fence. At least it stopped her and she wasn’t hurt, just a surface scratch. I watched from the window until I saw B go down and Moo go over her….yeah, talk about heart failure. Thankfully, Moo jumped over her and did not walk on top of her. Seriously though, it was like that scene in Anne of Green Gables where Anne is chasing after what she thought was HER cow through Rachel Lind’s garden, but it turned out to be Rachel Lind’s cow. Do you remember that scene? It’s funny now, but I wanted to turn Moo into ground beef if she didn’t stop running. Once she got caught, B was able to talk her down.

4. There was a ding dong on the door. I went to answer it, while walking to the door it ding donged again and I knew it was the children because no one else rings the door bell that many times in the span of a few seconds. When I answered the door Jr. was there and said, “I have 99 eggs?” We have been having quite a few customers come buy for eggs and other products so they younger children have been ringing the door bell and pretending to be customers too.

3. O’s face when she saw a new visitor on our farm:

2. I was talking to my mom and we were talking about animals and she told me how she had always thought rabbits and cats tried to mate each other. I go, “What would those be called catbits or rabats?”

1. My oldest son just said to me, “I”m not short, I’m fun size!”

What’s your funny of the week?

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Have You Seen Maleficent?

Posted by html404 on June 13, 2014
in Entertainment, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Kids Stuff, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews, Things to Do in Chicago, Uncategorized

We had a child ask to see Maleficent as part of their birthday celebration and we obliged. We went on opening weekend. If you haven’t gone to see Maleficent yet, it is still playing in theaters near you.

Maleficent is the backdrop to a movie many of us are most familiar with, Sleeping Beauty. There is more to the story than we originally thought. I really enjoyed the way the creators gave us with the reason for Maleficent’s curse on Aurora. I think we can all resonate with a broken heart, right? And many of us can probably also relate to being betrayed. It’s what we do with that betrayal and heart break that make us stronger or weaker. Maleficent did not initially choose wisely, unfortunately, and that led to her downward spiral.

It was hard not to love the characters in Maleficent, except King Stefan. My view of King Stefan completely changed, as did my view of Maleficent. Funny, isn’t it? Angelina Jolie was amazing as this character. I actually haven’t seen many of her movies and I think the last one I saw was SALT. My husband and I enjoyed her performance in SALT, but this movie made me want to see more her work, just to compare them.

I found the relationship between Maleficent and Diaval, her pet raven interesting and the relationship she formed with Aurora perplexing. Her relationship with Aurora showed the softer side of Maleficent’s younger days and it is what ultimately brought her out of her downward spiral. One of their last scenes together brought tears to my eyes.

We took all of our children to see Maleficent and we all loved it. It is rated PG. Our youngest just got a bit scared in the Wolf scene but that’s about it. No one had bad dreams or anything. So if you plan to see it, use your best judgement as you know your children best. Our youngest has seen so much more than our other children did at his age just because he has older siblings and he watches super heros so we knew he’d be ok.

Maleficent gets two thumbs up from us!

Learn more:

Website: disney.com/Maleficent

Like MALEFICENT on Facebook: facebook.com/DisneyMaleficent

Follow MALEFICENT on Twitter: @Maleficent

YouTube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTnR43JTLNs8AKNpJ4KFI6SSdpTzkcXjw

Instagram: http://instagram.com/disneystudios

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/disneystudios/maleficent/

Tumblr: http://disney.tumblr.com/

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Haying with Horses – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on June 11, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Things to Do in Chicago, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

I am barely getting much blogging done lately. It’s been busy here on the farm, plus we are homeschooling through the summer and I’ve just been enjoying life too much to sit very long in front of the computer!

Haying with Horses

Yesterday we went to a fellow farmer’s to learn how he farms with draft horses. It was very interesting. He owns two Percheron horses, along with two Morgans which is is also training to work like his Percherons.

We actually got to see Farmer L hay. He had already cut the field so we got to see him use his hay loader (which he purchased for just $90, if I remember correctly) and a hay wagon he built himself.

The reason Farmer L farms with horses is because of his dislike for the use of petroleum. He is self-taught and very good at what he does. He teaches driving lessons (learning to drive a team of horses) to another farmer friend of ours and she is enjoying the lessons a lot.

As crazy as it sounds, I’d love to farm with horses. It would give me an excuse to own horses because it would give them a purpose on the farm. Not sure I could convince hubby though as he is very much a tractor man.

What do you think of farming with horses in this day and age?

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Alone Yet Not Alone

Posted by html404 on June 10, 2014
in Books, Entertainment, Movies, Reviews, Uncategorized

We have the original book Alone Yet Not Alone so when I agreed to this review I mistakenly thought it was a review of the movie that is coming out in theaters (only a select few!) this Friday, June 13. It looks really, really good! Check out the trailer below:

The book review below is written by my 15 year old daughter, B. By the way, this book is based on a true story about two sisters during the French and Indian war (1755). It is written by Tracy Leininger Craven, which is the great something granddaughter of Barbara Leininger, one of the main characters.

Alone Yet Not Alone Book Review

By “B”

This may be the “movie version” of the book Alone Yet Not Alone: Their faith became their freedom, but it is almost exactly the same as the original we own, which I haven’t read it in a while. But you will hear no complaints from me about the new version! The only difference is there are photos from the movie.

I’ve always admired and respected Barbara and Regina. Not just for their strength but also for their love for God and their hope.

I hope I can be as great a big sister as Barbara. She never gave up on escaping and finding Regina.

I liked how Barbara never gave up on her faith. Sure she went through trial after trial but she never gave up. She is a big inspiration to me. This book made me think, “What would I have done in her situation?” I don’t know if I would have been able to stay strong, but the knowledge of their story has helped me strengthen my own faith in God so that I can stay strong.

To learn more about the book and movie visit: http://www.aloneyetnotalone.com/

Buy it Now

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Week #24 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on June 7, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Another week has sped by and it’s time for Saturday Top Five Laughs with Mel over at The Mommyhood Chronicles for week #24 (for us) in our Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. You know you live on a farm when your daughter says, “I hate it when I go into heat.” Then goes, “Wait, I’m not a cow.”

4. Our goose was attacking Annabeth (our pregnant goat) and Lokie (the new “kid”) actually pummeled the goose! I am proud that he has such spunk but a little concerned at the same time when thinking ahead to when he is older. We will be keeping him since B gave him to O for her birthday.

3. We discovered Atlas, our male ram, was nursing off of Hazel, Lokie’s mom. As endearing as it is, he shouldn’t be! So we had to go back to separating the goats and sheep.

And I was horrible keeping track of things this week so only have three things.